After Three Days of no Running

 I hadn't ran since Wednesday night, and I have to admit I was gun shy going out the door this morning. I didn't take Rocky with me, I wanted to focus on my form and stride AND I didn't want to disappoint Rocky by heading out the door and not even making it a mile. I didn't get up until a quarter until 8 AM, taking my sweet time out of reluctance. I walked down the driveway trying to avoid the ice and started the run halfway from the road. My form felt weird, almost hesitant and scared but I kept going and just hoping for good news.... I felt a little stiff but not bad, my left shin was a little achy but not bad.
 Around mile 2 the ball of my right foot was aching, or more like a pinched nerve but not bad and I just kept going. I still wasn't feeling any problems with my calves, so that was good news. Around mile 3, the outside of my left knee started to ache but nothing bad so I kept moving along. That went away (so did the weird pain in the ball of my foot), and around or after mile 5 my toes started stinging which I've had occasionally and normally using my moji foot massage thing helps that issue so I kept pushing along. I did feel a tinge of pain or tightness in my right IT band, I'm guessing from the old (first) running injury back in 2010 but nothing bad. I think my form was really affected by my fear of what my calves might do during this run.
  I made it to 7.1 miles without any real issues, and I didn't want to push my luck so I feel 7.1 miles in 1:15:26 with an average pace of 10:38 min/mile is good for today. Elevation gain of 129 feet and a loss of 128 feet, temperature of 27 degrees so not bad and felt good. 
Laps/splits were:
Mile 1 - 10:32
Mile 2 - 10:45
Mile 3 - 10:39
Mile 4 - 10:46
Mile 5 - 10:43
Mile 6 - 10:40
Mile 7 - 10:18
.1      - 10:18

    Overall, the run went well and I think the 3 days of rest helped a lot so hopefully with some foam rolling and stretching things will get even better. Tomorrow's 6 miler will hopefully be better or just as good as this morning. I guess I can call this week a cutback week with 21 miles... sucky but maybe the 36 miles 2 weeks ago was a bit much for my legs, I'll probably drop this week to 30 if things go well and make my long run only 12 or 13 miles rather than 15.